I'm currently using my old desktop system as my server, but I'm thinking of downsizing.
Current components:
- NSK6000, w/
- 120 mm Nexus rear exhaust
- 92 mm Nexus bottom front intake
- Zalman ZM400A-APF PSU with stock fan
- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
- Zalman ZM-NB47J
- AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 'Barton'
- Zalman 7000Cu w/ 92 mm Nexusmod (I think -- I certainly modded one of my 7000s and this is probably the one)
- 2x 512MB DDR1 400 MHz (Whatever they called 400MHz back then)
- Hercules Radeon 8500
- Zalman ZM80A passive cooler
- Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8, 8x SATA ports on PCI/PCIX (and highly affordable)
- 2x WD3200AAKS, in the bottom two slots of the NSK6000's drive holder
- 4x WD10EACS, in:
- Coolermaster 4in3 drive bay (old style), w/ Nexus 120, positioned in the bottom 3 out of the NSK's 4 5.25 slots, open to the front.
Runs Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS, including LAMP, Postfix, cacti, squirrelmail, mediawiki, and torrentflux.
The 320s are arranged partly as RAID1 mirrors for the system and partly as RAID0 for torrentflux's scratch disk and the teras are in 3TB worth of RAID5. Teras have AAM and -S 60 (sleep after 5 minutes), the 320s are set to noisy and don't sleep (and torrentflux would keep them there anyway).
Needs: Well, I'm pretty much okay with it being on 100 Mbit, so I don't need that much CPU for the RAID5 -- but I do need Just Enough. Most of the rest of the software is fairly trivial loading in my usage, but 2 gigs instead of one might well be nice (given prices these days).
Thoughts: Well, there's two ways to go with this, IMHO. One is the new Intel mini-ITX board with Atom 1.6 GHz, available for around 60 euros around here, Just Add Some DDR2 RAM (and maybe a powersupply, but that's the next stage, I think). The other way would be a microATX board with a regular low-power CPU.
Two questions:
a) How abouts them Atoms, eh? Especially given the chipset power usage of a couple dozen watts, is it really worth going *that* far back in performance to get a 4W TDP when you can get 35W, less at idle, in dualcore real CPUs?
b) Out of the current cheapish, lowpower (both ways) CPUs, do I go AMD or Intel?
c) My desktop might could use an upgrade from my current E4300. mATX board + E4300? Any thoughts?